Circadian
by disillusionist9
Summary: A collection of Thuna (Theo x Luna) ficlets and drabbles.
1. Grass Skirts

**Disclaimer:** This is all for fun, I do not claim ownership of the characters or anything recognized from the work of JK Rowling. I am only borrowing them.

 _Warning:_ Teen themes, subject to change: mild violence, scenes of a suggestive sexual nature, adult themes including but not limited to death and disease both mental and physical.

[A/N] 4/15/2016 What is a Rare Pair? As a couple/pairing, they have less than 0.05% representation on this site. This is with the ONLY filter as the pairing, not narrowed down by language or rating or anything. As of posting this story, there are 44 stories out of over 739,000 in the Harry Potter conglomerate featuring these two! For those who would like to know, that is 0.0.00005%.

I was baffled to find so few stories featuring these two, to be quite honest. This chapter was posted originally as chapter 25 in Choose Dare, requested by **chiseplushie** , and found its home in a collection of Theo/Luna drabbles.

 **Playlist** : Lose Your Soul - Dead Man's Bones

* * *

There would never be enough years between the war, and what he'd done to survive it, and where he was now. The sun could never warm away the cold left in his bones from casting Unforgivables and the stars were duller than he remembered in his boyhood. He didn't return to Hogwarts in favor of quietly rebuilding the countryside near his estate, destroyed by his late father and the other Death Eaters both magically and physically.

Theo fully embraced the natural cloak of night, counting the change of the seasons through the new shoots of leaves on branches or the constellations. It was soothing to stand beneath the changing sky and map the stars and planets. Seldomly were his wanderings across the Nott lands and surrounding villages quiet or solitary. Even in the deepest winter he could feel the gaze of fauna or hear carols sung on doorsteps from a few kilometers away.

Healing the earth on the estate would not be solved in one night, a fortnight, or even a month. Theo had no other calls on his time, by his own design, and from the pall that followed the children of notorious Death Eaters. He'd never taken the Mark himself. That didn't seem to matter to the Wizarding public.

Working further and further away from the heart of the manor grounds, and where his family's veritable castle was centered, Theo saw fewer stars and overheard fewer sounds of life from the village. On the outskirts of the grounds were thick rings of trees, some of them close to centuries old, strengthened by the ancient magic and skilled gardening house elves.

Singing the Dark Magic out of the trees, the grass, the flowers, and the rocks around him was easier each year, but he did not notice the silence behind his voice amplifying his steps in dry grass or snow or soft new earth in spring. At least, not until something else started filling it.

Small sounds, which most people take for granted, slowly filled the white noise in his ears once he'd reached the furthest borders of his ancestral property. The soft footfalls of another person or the brush of clothing against unkempt foliage tickled the edges of his hearing. They were sounds his subconscious couldn't immediately place, it had been so long since he'd heard them.

It took nearly a year for Theo to recognize he only heard these noises the week of the full moon.

Once realized, it only took another moment to know who the footsteps and soft sighs belonged to.

"Luna," he said into the dark one night. "I told you to leave me alone."

"You've been alone long enough," she replied from behind him. When he didn't turn to look at her or join her in the clearing of trees, she reached her hands out to him. "Are you still afraid of the moonlight?"

Theo shivered, letting her voice wash over him. His eyes were shut as tightly as he could. Knowing she would not leave until he had moved to her he went against his better judgement and turned to face his very own sliver of moonlight.

Bare feet, hair as wild as he remembered with flowers as blue as her eyes braided in sporadically, and a slip of a dress shimmering in the light with what appeared to be a skirt of woven grass...she was ethereal. Was it a decade now he'd last seen her, testifying to his benefit at the Wizengamot? Was it twenty? Theo couldn't say but it didn't matter. She shone just as brightly as the last time he'd held her.

"The stars dimmed for me, the sun can't warm me, why would I deserve moonlight?"

"Everyone deserves to be washed clean, Theo." Her head tilted, considering him from a new angle. Her arms were still outstretched towards him, swaying in the light wind. "You've been avoiding me."

It wasn't a question, and Theo didn't deny it with actions or words. Of course he was avoiding her; he was avoiding everyone.

"You've saved the earth here, it's time you rested. Come home." Luna took one step towards him away from the center of the clearing.

Theo hesitated at the edge under the branches of a willow tree, taking one step back to match her movement.

Luna was nothing if not persistent; she held none of his reservation when she closed the remaining steps between them. The edges of her grass skirt tickled her bare toes before she stood on them to kiss Theo gently, as if he may break. He very well might have if she'd turned away from him and listened to his words and not the meaning behind them.

Shafts of moonlight cut through the night so easily, and Luna let her light shine into the darkest corners of Theo's night.


	2. The Paint Goes Where?

**Disclaimer:** This is all for fun, I do not claim ownership of the characters or anything recognized from the work of JK Rowling. I am only borrowing them.

 _Warning:_ Teen themes, subject to change: mild violence, scenes of a suggestive sexual nature, adult themes including but not limited to death and disease both mental and physical.

[A/N] 4/15/2016 Requested on tumblr through a prompt from **shayalonnie.** Mean Girls for life.

 **Playlist** : Charlie Brown - Coldplay

* * *

Theo dressed properly, his shirts always tucked in, and wouldn't dream of leaving the common room in a state one could consider tousled. Blaise and Draco each lazed about the dungeons with abandon, wrinkles in their robes, improperly shod feet…the sight made him decidedly uncomfortable.

He clung to his sense of propriety and knowledge of how to dress and act no matter where he ended up. Outward control fostered inner control, he told himself. Outside in.

Difficult to keep control, however, when you're facing an ethereal woman ankle deep in paint.

"The paint's supposed to go where?" he whispered incredulously. Glossy black shoes shuffled loudly against carpet, moving tentatively further away from the strange apparition in his parlor.

"Everywhere, of course. You hired me to remove the lethifold from the cellar, but you are being followed by an Umgubular Slashkilter. The last person I saw with one was Cornelius Fudge, and he ignored it for far too long. He's permanently infested now."

Theo's face was blank, the only expression he could muster as he considered this strange witch with long blonde hair that came highly recommended by Draco. He could hardly concede or admit defeat if this was the prat's most recent prank. Were…were those actual fairy lights plaited into her hair? She'd already stripped down to some all over bodysuit that clung to her like the last drop of dew to a flower petal on a summer's morning.

A buzzing in his ear intensified for a moment, a green fairy light near her forehead catching his eye, and she was saying something. Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the noise he requested that she repeat herself.

"You heard me. Take. It. Off."

"I beg your pardon?"

Luna sighed with a warm smile, stepping out of the shallow basin full of white paint. Theo nearly had a heart attack as he watched her bare, white foot move towards his plush carpet. As he choked in protest, the paint crawled back into the pool and left her skin without a mark; thankfully his carpet was equally unscathed.

Before he had time to think, Theo's shoes were off and his pant legs rolled up above his knees. Watching Luna work the strange white paint over his exposed calves and feet was surreal. Almost as surreal as the woman herself.

Luna wrote him a lengthy prescription to remove his…he glanced at the parchment for the tenth time that night…Umgubular Slashkilter. He told himself it was only to show Draco he hadn't won that made him invite her back to the Manor. The second time was purely out of fascination, and as a bonus she brought the paint back and they spent the evening smoothing it over each other's bare shoulders. The third time, she coaxed him into the rose garden, barefoot.

Every time since, Luna, with fairy lights woven in her hair, led him a little further from propriety.


	3. Fireflies

_Happy Birthday, colubrina. A tumblr prompt from primruesabcd from ages ago, thank you!_

* * *

He did not know when he started associating moonlight with her hair. Maybe after he heard her name and snorted at the frankly obvious implications it held. Or was it the first time he'd been wandering the corridors trying to calm his mind and ran across her sitting on a courtyard windowsill, bare toes skimming the snow atop a bush below. Could it have been the first time he passed a memory from his temple to hers, a safe vessel to carry detailed plans from one side to the other, saving dozens of lives every time they met? It didn't matter. She was the light to his darkness.

And he wanted all of her for himself.

Luna didn't question Theo when he left her a request to meet on the east banks of the Black Lake after sunset. They'd met to exchange information in odder places, and Theo not only suspected but _knew_ in his bones that either the castle or the meddlesome Headmaster were making it easier for their meetings to happen. For that reason he felt a lining of guilt build in his stomach and rise in his throat, irritating the ulcer Pomfrey had diagnosed two months ago. She'd tutted and implored him to try to be more conscious of his eating habits. One eyebrow lifted, he'd buttoned up his robes and held his tongue before he'd admonished her for not finding the signs of muggle painkillers and cigarette tar inside of him. And really, he couldn't force the house elves to make a meal only for him. The castle was nearly ruined now, after hours of battles between students and Death Eaters and professors all on different sides of the same battle, and it hurt to see his second home in such a state.

She was braiding long willow branches when he found her. Summer was starting to fill the air with the sweet rotting smell of leaves stuck on the banks of the lake, and the ground was warm enough he didn't flinch when he noticed she wasn't wearing shoes today.

"Sneak thieves or on purpose?" he asked, striding up to her calmly, hiding the storm underneath.

"Always on purpose. Hello, Theo."

"Hello, Luna. Willow branches?"

Luna smiled at him and kept the rhythm in her fingers, setting another craft down on top of a pile of others, reaching to grab another set of three to braid, securing one end under a rock. "The world could use with a bit more balance, don't you agree?"

He lifted an eyebrow and heard Snape's voice reciting the potions qualities of willow pieces in his head, and replied, "Balance and harmony, yes."

She hummed in acknowledgement and continued to work. Theo liked her silence as much as her voice since she always seemed to know when he needed one or the other. Today his thoughts were loud enough he couldn't concentrate on much else. He sat on a fallen tree trunk not far from her perch and looked up at the castle in the setting sun. Tall spires reached towards the sky in a stretch to victory - victory at the cost of so many lives, and he tried not to think of those who may have died because of information he passed along.

"Words get trapped if you don't speak them," Luna said, interrupting his maudlin thoughts. "Like fish trapped in a bowl that's too small."

Theo blinked to adjust his eyes in the dying light, small fires popping up in the darkness to light the few paths that remained after the battle carnage. "Do you have any regrets, Luna?"

For the first time since joining her, Theo watched her hands pause then stop their work. He kept watching those hands instead of looking up into eyes that saw and knew too much. Luna crawled the few feet between them and moved to nestle under the arm closest to her.

"No," she said, after a time. "The means are worth the ends."

Theo wrapped an arm around her, the rough wool of her jumper itchy against the fresh scars on his arm. Feeling bolder now that there wasn't a war between them, he reached up and rubbed his knuckles against her throat with soothing up and down pressure. A firefly that was lazily circling the tall grass nearby made a zigzag pattern in the air on its way towards Luna's hair, bright enough to trick the bug to come closer. Luna didn't flinch when it landed, or when another followed it.

"You're bleeding," Luna said, drawing the hand not tracing runes of protection and love on her neck into both of her own to rest on her knees. There were still a few fresh lines on that arm he hadn't bothered to heal yet and a burn from a stray hex. Drawing her wand from the sleeve of her jumper, she cast several healing spells on him, some he recognized and others he did not.

"Thank you," he said.

Her hands lingered on the healed skin, tracing his scars, too old to be completely erased, webbing over the muscles and bones. The fireflies still wandered amongst her curls illuminating a flower here or a leaf there artfully woven into braids. Soft light from their thoraxes made her glow, a candle in the approaching night.

Theo drew Luna into his lap, cataloguing where she'd changed since he'd last held her like this over a year ago, before she was captured and locked in the Malfoy's dungeon and before he'd had a chance to tell her how he felt. Words weren't enough anymore. All they exchanged were words, memories full of them, to help the side that miraculously won with magic he didn't think he wanted to ever understand. His hand found a hollow above her hip that was deeper than he remembered, but he just drew her as close to him as possible, not caring that the fireflies were making their way from her hair towards his.

What was done, was done. The night stretched before them, blanketing the ground of Hogwarts in a peaceful stillness, and he was content to greedily absorb all the light she was giving him.


	4. Power

"Don't be afraid," Luna said. "I feel it, too."

Theo held his breath, refusing to open his eyes in case the basilisk youngling slithered by again. It wasn't old enough to kill a human yet but the creatures Luna was caring for could trigger a migraine forceful enough to heel a hippogryff.

"What exactly am I feeling, my Dark Lady?"

He heard her soft humming grow louder as she moved up behind him. "Power, Theo. You're feeling power."

* * *

 _prompted by: fleiur_


End file.
